All I know to be my truest, most accessible form of power is my voice…my written voice especially. So tonight I write. Tonight, after yet another American police officer walks away with no punishment for executing a Black life. No punitive measures. No penance or reparation for extinguishing the flame of life in a Black child…all in the name of the law.

Yet, so many of us stand in anger and shock that a grand jury has delivered a decision of “no probable cause” to indict Darren Wilson, an officer of the law, for killing Michael Brown in the middle of a street in Ferguson, MO. Anger and shock, even after sworn officers of the law have not been indicted for choking Eric Garner to death in New York less than 30 days BEFORE Michael Brown was killed by Darren Wilson. Even after a grand jury excused the police officers who shot down John Crawford in an Ohio Walmart just four days prior to Michael Brown’s murder in August. Even as the murder of Roshad McIntosh and those of more than five Black boys were ruled “justified” homicides at the hands of Chicago police over a six month period. And even as tonight’s decision was read matter-of-factly less than two days after police shot and killed 12 year old Tamir Rice in Ohio and Akai Gurley in New York.

Even still…

Our anger and shock is understandable…on some levels. On the human/intellectual level, yes a desire to receive justice and live a life of absolute protection under the law is a basic one. As a part of humanity, it is expected that all life will be regarded above animals and fowl that are shot for sport…or out of fear. And when life is not regarded above animals and is instead mutilated, terrorized and hunted for sport out of fear and hatred, well that confounds all human intelligence.

Same applies on an emotional level…same applies. It’s understandable the desire to be held in dignity, respected and cherished.

It’s all any human wants. So it is understandable that the Black experience in America often is undergirded with complexities of disappointing pain and agony. It is the reason why even after we have endured, and dare I say survived, the atrocities of chattel slavery, domestic terrorism and lynching at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow, murders of our human rights change agents, and modern day criminalization, we still hold out hope for protection and validation under the same system that designed all of the above.

But there are other levels… levels we surely must get in tune with to help us navigate these very dark and tumultuous times. Our supernatural “spirit” mind understands that all is in Divine Order. That there is a lesson before and a lesson in dying. When we understand this, we will then come to the real questions…what is the lesson? How is my life complicit and accountable to the lesson? We each were born for this time. Each one of us could have come through this life journey in a different time and space as an entirely different being. Perhaps we were and this is our do over… How will you make this time count?

It is truly hard to articulate all the jumble of emotion pulling on my nerves and soul. Trying to get it all out before I allow the tears to fall. Because I really must know my tears are not for Michael Brown. Nor for John Crawford. Nor any of those whose lives were sacrificed for the wicked ways of this society. And surely I know my tears are nothing compared to the tears that have watered the way our ancestors came. The path we are moving forward on, however painfully slow, has been stained with the blood of MANY of our ancestors. It is in this knowing that I dare not act as if this is the worst for us. I had better not bow and cry, and become so blind with misery that I do not acknowledge this is NOT our worst moment. When we know we have been liberated far less time in this country than we were held captive slaves. Acknowledge that we cry out and speak the names of Michael Brown in global unison with our brothers and sisters on continents across waters, something that could have never been done 80 years ago. How many have died torturous deaths never having their killer’s face identified? How many have died screaming into the wind heard only by howling dogs and their killers’ wicked ears? Ida Barnett Wells traveled by her lonesome pleading the case overseas about the strange fruit hanging from southern trees in America, one dead Black soul at a time with her humble newspapers and chronicles. I better know it. You had better know it.

People are demonstrating and organizing, building coalitions to effect change. A delegation of young people from Chicago have recently returned from addressing the United Nations about police brutality. We Charge Genocide documented their presentation and experience, another piece to the lesson to be shared now and throughout history.

So I will cry. I will feel my pain. And you will too. But let us not get it twisted that just because this may be the cause célébre of our lifetime, it is progression from that which our ancestors knew. And it is because of that truth, that we hold fast to the Almighty universal truth: we are here for a reason. What will you do with this moment? How will we move the needle forward? Use our history as our guide. The chains could not hold us. The dogs and the bombs could not cower us.

May we live through our tears.

Let us use our tears not for righteous indignation, but to water the way across for our future children yet unborn. And when we wipe our tears may we truly see the shining princes and princesses who are living before our eyes daily. May we mentor them. May we acknowledge them. May we love them.